Cynthia Rockwell(Contributed by Gabe Rosenberg ’16) One of this year’s most influential foreign policy leaders is a Wesleyan alumna, and she’s part of The Diplomatic Courier’s “99 Under 33.” Stephanie Schwartz ’08 has been named as someone who “mobilizes people in the foreign policy community with bold new ideas,” as part of the publication’s project, together with the nonprofit Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, to name the top 99 leaders under the age of 33. Schwartz, who holds a B.A. in government from Wesleyan, is the author of Agents of Change: Youth in Post-Conflict Reconstruction. The book examines the role of…
John Brown ’85 recently joined INTECH as senior vice president and global head of client development, a newly-created role designed to focus on continued client-service excellence. Previously, he was managing director of the sales, marketing and product development team at Hartford Investment Management Company. INTECH is located in West Palm Beach, Fla. with its research office in Princeton, N.J., and international division in London, England. As of June 2012, INTECH had approximately $39.4 billion under management and 80 employees worldwide. Prior to working at Hartford Investment Management Company, Brown was affiliated with Fortis Investments in Boston, where he was an executive vice…
Lauren RubensteinAssistant Professor of Psychology Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera has become Associate Editor of The European Journal of Social Psychology. The journal is an international forum for original, high-quality, peer-reviewed research in all areas of social psychology. The international editorial team encourages submissions based on empirical, meta-analytical, and theoretical research. Topics covered include, among others, intergroup relations, social cognition, attitudes, social influence and persuasion, self and identity, verbal and nonverbal communication, language and thought, affect and emotion, embodied and situated cognition and individual differences of social-psychological relevance. The European Journal of Social Psychology is sponsored by the European Association of Social Psychology.…
The Magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education featured a story this month on Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins' Dante Project, "a program he created that attempts to use theater as a catalyst for positive change in prisons throughout the world." According to the article, the program, which has been facilitated in places as far flung as Italy and Indonesia, encourages incarcerated men and women to "write about points of connection between their own life stories and the experiences of the characters" in classics like Dante's Inferno. These writings are then used to create a script that is performed…
Janice Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, and Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of biology, were recently honored in Hartford Magazine’s “Amazing Women” issue. Two of only 13 women selected this year for recognition, Naegele and Grabel were lauded for their contributions to the field of stem cell research. The magazine's profile of Naegele states: "The research conducted by Janice Naegele, who is professor of biology and neuroscience and behavior at Wesleyan University, is opening up new possibilities for treating epilepsy through stem cell therapy. Her work focuses on temporal lobe epilepsy,…
On Sept. 14 and 15, Professor of Economics Richard Grossman attended a conference in Munich jointly sponsored by the Bundesbank (the German central bank) and a Munich-based research institute called CESifo. Grossman chaired a session and acted as a discussant at the conference, whose focus was, "The Banking Sector and the State." According to the conference website: "The current financial and sovereign debt crisis has shown once again that the banking sector and the state are intertwined in many ways: On the one hand, the state lends support to distressed banks and accepts risks from the private sector; in this…
On Aug. 31, "Where We Live," a program on WNPR public radio, featured two segments about music at Wesleyan. Rob Rosenthal, provost, vice-president of academic affairs and the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, and his son Sam Rosenthal, a writer and musician in New York City, discussed a new collection of Pete Seeger's personal writings that they co-edited. The book is Pete Seeger: In His Own Words (Paradigm Publishers). They described the experience of combing through decades of Seeger's writings in the folk singer's Beacon, NY home while he hovered nearby. "He would drop in from time to time…
David PesciIn a Sept. 5 op-ed for The New York Times, Wesleyan President Michael Roth discusses the recent calls to further specialize education and narrow what we teach students from K-12 and on to college at the exclusion of the liberal arts, especially the humanities. Roth says this drive to turn students into “human capital” is not a new. In fact, the esteemed 19th century educational philosopher John Dewey argued against the very same calls, saying, in part, “that learning in the process of living is the deepest form of freedom.”
In an Aug. 24 op-ed for The Hartford Courant, Lauren Caldwell, assistant professor of classical studies, says that U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s reference to women being able to consciously prevent conception during rape is relying on “facts” presented by the ancient Roman physician Soranus of Ephesus in the Second Century, A.D. Caldwell also says, “The next time I teach my course, I will be able to bring in the example of Rep. Akin to illustrate the ways in which 'medical understanding' continues to be used with the aim of social control,” which was also an objective of Roman rulers in…
On Sept. 18, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history, associate professor of science in society, associate professor and chair of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. In light of the current mission of the Mars Curiosity Rover, Tucker writes about the centuries-long search for extraterrestrial life. The op-ed can be read online here. On Aug. 23, The New York Times published an op-ed by Tucker. Tucker says that the science behind Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s comments on rape is completely sound, at least from the perspective of the 12th Century. She says that what may be…
Peter Rutland, professor of government, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies, writes in a Sept. 10 op-ed published in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune about two recent symbolic events in the Caucasus region that threaten to ignite hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Olivia DrakeElizabeth McAlister, chair of the Religion Department, received a grant worth $114,000 from an initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and developed in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council’s program on Religion and the Public Sphere. McAlister plans to study the increase and globalization of what she terms “aggressive forms of prayer,” including evangelical spiritual warfare prayer and political forms of imprecatory prayer, in the context of increasing global militarization. Over the coming years, 28 grantees will participate in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and digital initiatives organized in conjunction with the project. McAlister also is associate professor…